What Love Is
by Rosethorn
Summary: A discussion and a bargain. OFC, Calypso, and Norrington though not together. Spoilers for AWE.


Even the Caribbean got chilly at night, and Michelle de Chalis was in formal dress, but she did not mind the cold, not now. There were far more important things to think about.

The sand chilled and grated on her bare feet (for she had left her shoes at the head of the beach). The ocean lapped up every so often to soak the hem of her dress. The salt would surely ruin it. No matter—her papa could afford more.

Dark. It was dark. Her _maman_ had said it must be dark, and the stars must be out, not a cloudy night. Michelle glanced up at the stars, cold pinpoints of light in a black velvet sky, and shivered, but not from the cold.

She walked forward until she was knee-deep in the surf. That too her _maman_ had said. Michelle must put herself entirely under the power of the sea. Only then would the sea answer her call.

Knee-deep was as far as she was prepared to go, though. Michelle did not swim and she did not intend to learn now.

She took a deep breath, knelt in the surf (shivering as the water struck her and soaked through her skirt and bodice), and ducked her head beneath the water just long enough to soak her hair. The preliminaries would have to be satisfied with that.

"Calypso," she called, into the sea wind that blew in her face and chilled her further. "Calypso. I call you. Hear me!" Her voice rang out across the water, the confident command she had cultivated all her life shaken only a little by chattering teeth.

For a moment, all she heard was the washing of the waves on the sand.

"Calypso!" she called again, desperation beginning to tinge her voice. "_Hear me!"_

"I hear, chile," said a quiet voice behind her.

Michelle pitched forward in surprise and nearly got a mouthful of salt water. As it was she caught herself in time and whirled on all fours to stare up at the goddess behind her.

She was made of water, was Michelle's first stunned thought. A woman entirely of water, and as unself-consciously naked as Eve. She wore a faintly sad expression, and stood with her hands by her sides, though she smiled when Michelle looked up at her. "I hear, chile," she repeated. "Why call me?"

"I..." Michelle shook away her shock and sat back on her heels, though she judged it wise not to rise to her feet. She noted with an absent corner of her mind that the wind had calmed. "I have a request of you."  
"Oh, so?" Calypso's expression turned ironic, and she raised a single eyebrow. A small fish jumped from her navel into the water. "All do. What ask you?"

She took a deep breath. This was it. "I want him back."

The water went silent. For an instant the tide had stopped coming in. Michelle jerked her head up and stared wide-eyed at Calypso, whose face had turned to stone.

"Him?" the goddess asked, carefully. "Him who?"

"James Norrington. My...my friend," Michelle said. She had been about to claim him as lover, but to tell anything less than the truth might doom her cause from the beginning. "But I love him. And I want him back."

"Him a man," the goddess said harshly, and spat into the waters. "Him not yours, not now, not ever. Him love a woman who never love him back and you ask for him."

She took a deep, steadying breath. "I love him," she said, as simply as she could. "I know he does not love me. But I love him. I want him back."

Calypso studied her face for a long moment, then sighed. "I demand payment." Simple fact, simple statement.

Michelle nodded. She had expected this. "I offer myself," she said. Simple in return.

To her surprise, Calypso snorted. "And what would I want wit' you?" she demanded. "You are a chile of the earth, not of the sea. I can do nothing wit' you and I wouldn't want to. You are worth nothing to me."

She blinked, and shivered again in the renewed sea wind. "Then I have nothing to give you."  
"You who wear fine dresses and jump in the water wit' them, you say that?"

"They are not mine," Michelle said, with unaccustomed candor. "They are my papa's. And if he ever gets a child on his wife they will be taken away in a heartbeat. I am not quite fool enough to believe he will keep me for very long if another heir presents itself."  
Calypso looked her over again, under the stars. "Yes," she said, at last. "I see that. These men, they do not keep their halfbreed children very long."

Michelle had stopped being ashamed of her faintly colored skin a long time ago. "If it were not for my _maman_ I could not have contacted you," she said. "It does not shame me."

"Well for you," Calypso said. "I do not work without payment."

"And I have nothing to pay with." She bowed her head and let the sea chill her spirit with her body. "I am sorry to have wasted your time."

Calypso nodded, but did not depart. Instead, she circled Michelle again, her steps slow as an iceberg. "Perhaps..." she said, slowly. "Perhaps we can talk. A payment not now, but later."

"I'll do it," Michelle said, immediately.

"A payment I will choose," the goddess said, a warning in her tone. "You will give me whatever I ask when I ask it. Anything at all, chile, and you would do it for love of him who does not love you?"

There was silence for a moment; Michelle listened to the waves roll up the beach, felt the currents rush by her in the water, watched the stars reflected in the ocean and knew her answer.

"Isn't that what love is?" she asked.

Calypso looked down at her, her face unreadable. Eventually, she said, "The payment is fair."

Michelle blinked, startled, and jerked back as the woman-form of water collapsed into the ocean around her.

Suddenly the chill of the water penetrated and she shivered violently enough to fall over. She had to get out of the surf, and _now,_ or she would freeze. She stumbled to her feet and out of the ocean and shivered herself a little warm again, and wished she had thought to bring a cape or something.

How long would it be before her request was fulfilled? How long could she wait? She didn't even know when or where Calypso would bring him, she realized, and sighed. Her stepmother always said she needed to think before she acted...

Somewhere down the beach, a man groaned, and whimpered a name. Her name.

Michelle picked up her skirts and ran.


End file.
